


desperately wanting

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Series: letters home [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childbirth, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family Issues, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot, Uncomfortable Conversations, Waiting, for a certain definition of Sweet, this is as cheerful as i get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27126934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: a story about a shipwreck.
Relationships: Brienne of Tarth & Selwyn Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: letters home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980818
Comments: 17
Kudos: 129





	desperately wanting

**Author's Note:**

> 20 october 2020.
> 
> for J  
> (i am stubborn, stubborn, stubborn!)

The future Evenstar, daughter of Tarth, arrived on a storm-tossed wave some months after the Long Night. She had windburned cheeks, eyes that had once been called calm, and wore simple clothes -- tunic, breeches -- that did little enough to conceal her form.

If the smallfolk knew her, they did not acknowledge it. Shame or pride? 

She went to see her father and knelt before him, a supplicant and a knight.

Selwyn took his time in answering her: and Brienne rose up without permission, standing at her full height and searching his face, as he searched hers.

He looked older. New lines had grown around his mouth, and what color was left in his hair was lost to the snow overtop it. He said, "I heard tale of your journey. Your troubles. You have had many, since you left your home."

"Trouble," said Brienne, "and triumph. I could not find both here on the island."

"You're pledged to Lady ... the lady of Winterfell?"

"I ... Lady Sansa, yes. I was. She released me from her service."

"On what grounds?"

"I was knighted," she said. "Father."

"Did you fail your task, that she sent you home?"

"I asked to be freed."

He stood then, and went from the room.

She followed. "I am a knight," she said. "And --"

"And fat with a bastard, Brienne?"

She opened her mouth and shut it again and said, slowly, "If you are not willing to accept your daughter as she is, -- as you once were willing to do -- I will no longer trouble you with my presence."

He was of a height with her, now; she'd grown while she was away in one last bit as she slipped into adulthood -- or perhaps he had shrank.

He looked tired. He looked too long grieving. He said "Do you know who is the father?"

"He loves me," she said. "He loves me, and he is not ... he is a good man. He knows I am here, he knows who I am. He only tarries because he ... there are things he must finish. He will come as soon as --"

"He wed you? He said the words in a sept?"

"We -- not yet."

Selwyn's expression did not change.

Brienne flushed. "I trust him," she said. "Father. I am not a fool."

"You may live here," he said. "You are still my daughter. But no illegitimate brat will ever inherit Tarth."

"He will come," said Brienne.

*

Jaime did not come.

The winter rains arrived instead, and with them came weather that lashed sea-spray across the tall pale cliffs, and tore down trees that had stood for generations; they brought too a long and sleepless night for the house of Evenfall. 

In the morning, Brienne watched the sun rise on the face of her daughter. 

She wept then, as she had not done all the long months of waiting, and her father said nothing -- no reproach -- except: "What is her name?"

"It isn't my choice."

"What do you mean?"

"Her father has that honor."

"Brienne --"

She rested her face against the newborn's soft, milk-sweet skin.

*

Rain turned to clear skies, and clouds blew across the waters, and Jaime did not come. 

The child was given a name, and Selwyn began again to talk about marriage negotiations, and Jaime did not come.

*

"You have a duty," Selwyn said.

"I have a daughter," said Brienne. "There is a new heir."

"She is not --"

"And when her father returns? When we are wed? Will you deny her then, or will you change your mind?"

"Brienne."

"You will not argue me out of my belief."

"How long will you persist in this stubbornness?"

She did smile at that. "When have you known me to give up?"

*

Selwyn's rounded shoulders turned to a stoop; his cough turned to a rattle, and no amount of robes could fight the chill in his bones.

Brienne watched him and felt, for the first time, the full weight of responsiblity she could not run away from.

So the winter came again. And she found herself promising that when -- 

"If," she said.

"When," said her father.

\-- when she became the Evenstar, she would begin to seek a husband in all earnestness and haste.

*

Selwyn passed that autumn, having held out longer than anyone could have expected or hoped -- and Jaime did not come.

*

The offers for her hand were few, and none were even as so flattering as the one Hyle Hunt once made. An aging and ugly woman, no longer a maid, with a half-grown bastard and a lonesome island at the edge of the world? Brienne was the one seeking out replies, and most of the returns were half-polite disinterest; but here and there she felt a nibble at the line.

She was walking the shoreline and thinking of those nibbles, thinking of the distance between expectation and hope, thinking of the thousand and one minor cares that chewed at her days, when a man came alone along the beach. He moved stiff and slow, as if he had been a long time on the way. 

Her heart caught in her throat a moment, her hands caught in her skirts -- and then she was running hard along the sands, desperate to have him in her arms.

**Author's Note:**

> -their baby is about five years old when Jaime comes home
> 
> -women giving birth during storms is a real phenomenon
> 
> -“How green becomes wood  
> In a family tree”


End file.
